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Canvas Updates

Whether it's fixing glitches or adding new tools like the accessibility checker, Canvas is constantly seeking ways to improve as an online learning management system. The Canvas Community produces frequent Release Notes that contain details on these updates, and we want you to know how Canvas changes may affect and help you.

Updates for December 08, 2018

Course cards can be manually ordered in the Card View Dashboard. This change allows you to place course cards in a specific order.

For a course card, you can select the Options menu and move the card to another location in the Dashboard.

You can remove all observer roles from conference invitations. This change allows you to directly manage observer roles when inviting course members.

The Blueprint Course Feature Option has been enabled for all Canvas institutions and may apply to you if you have permission to manage Blueprint courses. If allowed, this feature allows you to deploy, update, and maintain course design templates or components across any number of courses.

In the Navigation page, the Home link does not include a Settings menu. This change aligns consistency with intended functionality of keeping the Home link at the top of the Course Navigation Menu.

To view more, see Release Notes or the Canvas Community's Screencast (below) concerning these updates.

Updates for October 27, 2018

Analytics BETA is a navigation item now available to instructors. It is available to instructors and TA's and assists in tracking student data.

Students and instructors can now view Google and Microsoft Office 365 file uploads' status in the Gradebook and the Speedgrader. If a file failed to upload, the student will see an "upload failed" icon.

The "List View" option for students now includes a summary for each event so that students can quickly view task information from within the Dashboard.

Updates for September 15, 2018

If an instructor is using moderated grading, they can click "accept" on one grader's input to mark it as the final grade without having to review each grader's decision. Final graders are still able to enter custom grades for students after clicking "accept" on a grader's input.

If multiple graders used a rubric to review a student's work, final graders can view those rubric ratings within Speedgrader.

Instructors can now leave comments on a muted assignment and/or on anonymous student submissions in Speedgrader. Any anonymous grader notations remain anonymous after an assignment is unmuted.

In the old and new Gradebooks, instructors can import custom columns from a CSV file.

After an instructor filters by section in the Gradebook, that section only will also appear in the Speedgrader.

In Speedgrader, the right-hand bar offers the option to "Download Submission Comments" as a PDF.

To view more, see Release Notes or the Canvas Community's Screencast (below) concerning these updates.

Updates for August 25, 2018

At the bottom-left of the "Calendar" item in an instructor's account, instructors have the option to export their Calendar Feed to their personal calendar (Google Calendar, iCal, Outlook, etc.). The exported calendar items now show all appointment details (including the course name, participant names, and student comments).

For instructors who use Learning Outcomes, there are now options to hide outcomes or students with no results.

In Speedgrader, if an assignment is anonymous, submission details will not be shown until the assignment has been unmuted. This ensures that students remain anonymous until their work is graded.

To view more, see Release Notes or the Canvas Community's Screencast (below) concerning these updates.

Updates for August 4, 2018

Students can select a "To Do List" view in their Dashboard. This view now groups daily assignments by course. When a student logs in to Canvas, they are immediately shown the day's tasks. Students can create their own to-do items and view missing assignments.

Instructors can add non-graded items (like no-submission assignments and pages) to student's to-do lists along with a due date.

Students who are submitting files using Google Drive or Microsoft Office Files can leave a page without disrupting the ongoing upload process.

Instructors can create groups of calendar appointments (like office hours) that students can select to schedule meetings with the instructor.

Comment threads in the SpeedGrader are now grouped together and can be expanded easily.

If moderated grading is enabled for an assignment, only final graders can exempt a student from that assignment.

To view more, see Release Notes or the Canvas Community's Screencast (below) concerning these updates.

Updates for July 14, 2018

If moderated grading is enabled for an assignment, students' and moderators' names can be hidden to prevent the impact of bias.

When creating a rubric, instructors can select "Remove points from rubric" to rate students' assignments without impacting points awarded.

In SpeedGrader, instructors' comments on a document submission will remain on the same page. If comments exceed space limits on the page, they will be shown through an indicator (example: "2 more comments") at the top of the page.

For instructors who use Canvas Commons, search results can now be filtered by students' grade level.

To view more, see Release Notes or the Canvas Community's Screencast (below) concerning these updates.

Updates for June 23, 2018

Calendar events in Canvas can now be made to repeat themselves every day, week, or month. Instructors can select a "Count" function that labels these events as the first, second, etc. of their kind.

The Discussion index page has been updated to improve accessibility. Not much of the index appears to have changed, but the "All" and "Unread" options are now listed in a drop-down box, and the "subscribe" button has changed to a "bookmark" icon. Instructors can now create a non-graded discussion that is section-specific.

Instructors can now copy entire modules in the "Modules" page. New modules default to an unpublished state and have "Copy" at the end of their name. For information about limitations for copying items within a module, see Canvas's Release Notes on the topic.

To view more, see Release Notes or the Canvas Community's Screencast (below) concerning these updates.

Updates for June 2, 2018

In Speedgrader and on the Submission Details page, instructors can now leave annotations on BMP, JPEG, JPG, PNG, TIF, and TIFF images. Larger images are scaled down so they can be viewed without scrolling.

Any user can now comment on an annotation in Speedgrader. If these comments are longer than five lines, they are truncated to show the first line. Also, instructors can delete any user’s comments or annotations. No one but the comment’s author will be able to see deleted work.

To view more, see Release Notes or the Canvas Community's Screencast (below) concerning these updates.

Updates for April 21, 2018

In Canvas's Conferences tool, instructors now have the ability to delete individual concluded conferences. These concluded conferences also show the date and time at which they concluded below their title on the Conferences page.

In Canvas's Rich Content Editor, a word counter appears at the bottom right of the text window.

To view more, see Release Notes or the Canvas Community's Screencast (below) concerning these updates.

Updates for March 31, 2018

Internet Explorer has transitioned from being a fully supported browser to a functionally supported browser. In other words, this browser can be used only in Windows, and Canvas in Internet Explorer may appear differently over time, but it will still work with Canvas.

For those who use Learning Outcomes, outcomes can be imported into a course using a CSV file. For more on outcomes, visit Canvas Communities.

In Speedgrader, you now have the ability to add comments to a student's assignment.

From left to right, available options for making marks on a student assignment are:

Selection allows you to select text and other annotations you have made

Point annotationallows you to select a point within an assignment and then leave a comment

Highlight annotation allows you to highlight text within an assignment

Freetext annotation allows you to click on any part of the project and type comments within a textbox

Strikeout annotation allows you to draw a line through text by clicking and dragging across a word

Free draw annotation allows you to draw on a student's assignment

Area annotation allows you to create a box around an area, and leave a comment

Numbers 2 through 7 on the above list allow for you to customize markings with color, size, and more! When you are adding or clicking on an annotation, a trashcan icon will appear in the annotation's edit window. This allows you to delete any annotation.

To view more, see Release Notes or the Canvas Community's Screencast (below) concerning these updates.